What Are Life Skills?

Life Skills are behaviours and habits we use to manage and live our everyday lives. They are skills that we learn either directly through being taught, or indirectly, through our personal experiences and social influences.

Necessary life skills will vary enormously from person to person. They are affected by the society in which we live and what is expected of us.

Generally speaking, and this is most certainly not an exhaustive list, we’re looking at skills such as:

Many essential life skills are used simultaneously in our everyday lives and they are all highly transferable from activity to activity. Ultimately, it is how we learn and then apply these skills that affects us personally in our everyday lives.

Many of these essential life skills that are so critical for independent living are taught to us by our parents and grandparents – either through observation or direct experience. For example, keeping a positive attitude. This is a life skill even scientists are now beginning to accept has a huge impact on how successful we are in our lives.

Modern day life: two-working parents, the demise of the nuclear family, fragmented families, etc., all mean that in the past few decades, many children have grown into adults without having had the opportunity to “hone” their essential life skills sub-consciously with parents and grandparents.

The cry of a generation “it’s not my fault, I wasn’t taught how to eat properly; to manage my money; communicate effectively, behave appropriately; keep fit…, etc., etc.,” is becoming all too familiar and all too loud. As a parent myself, I decided that one of my worst fears was to hear this from my own children. As a result, my husband and I began to actively hone our own life skills and research ways to consciously pass those skills onto our children. We want to maintain our CANDo attitude towards life and we want our children to grow up with a CANDo attitude to life. When friends began to comment on what we were up to and take an interest, we began to think that a lot of what we’d learned (and are still learning) might be of use to others hence CANDo Life Skills.

I’d love to hear from you: Are you’re honing a particular life skill or passing anything on to your own children at the moment? What’s working for you? Don’t hold back, you too CANDo it! Leave a comment or, drop me an email at catATcandolifeskillsDOTcom. I read everything. Thanks!